The Ultimate List of Shadiest People in ASUCD
In my five years of involvement in ASUCD, I have seen a lot of extremely shady antics. As I’ve mentioned before, I do not believe power corrupts, I believe power allows the already-prone-to-corruption to show themselves. There are a lot of scandals in real government, and students love to point these out - but what most people don’t realize is that its not because the people involved in our government are more prone to corruption than your average person - its that they have much greater opportunities (and are under much much greater scrutiny, thus revealing every indiscretion).
That said, I believe what ASUCD does is show us how badly your average ambitious person behaves when given a little bit of power. Or at least, when not behaving downright badly, it really exhibits how much their perspectives change to what is convenient for them.
The Good List
Unfortunately, those with exemplary good ethical standards don’t necessarily stand out the way bad ethics do. I would like to start on a good note however, by mentioning those who have impressed me with their ethics:
Surprisingly Admirable:
(ii) Ari Kalfayan - There is no doubt that Kalfayan was a jackass. The guy just didn’t play well with others. But by that same token, he never succumbed to the inescapable Senate groupthink. No matter how un-PC his opinion was or how much the other senators disagreed, he would not be dissuaded from sticking to his guns and telling everyone exactly what he thought. Despite the fact that the senate wrote legislation specifically targeting him on more than one occasion, I cannot think of a single thing Kalfayan did which was actually unethical or shady. I voted him last place that election, but he turned out to be my favourite senator of the batch (though I might still vote him last!).
(i) Nafeh Malik - Malik ran for Senate in Fall, 2005, but resigned immediately upon election due to the Campaigning in the Dorms Controversy. Upon his election, he announced “...I hereby resign ... I was in the freshman dorms, I never lied about that. Fact is, I was told to go there by my Focus [his political party] advisors ... and you all sit around smiling smugly as if you didn't do the same.” (and I’m certain everyone smiling smugly around the table HAD done the same) While Nafeh didn’t necessarily exhibit exemplary ethics, he at least was completely honest throughout about what he had done and had the decency to step down in light of it. This contrasts sharply with Brianna Haag, also implicated, who refused to step down and served out her term.
Exemplary Nonstudents:
(ii) Don Dudley, Student Judicial Affairs & Campus Judicial Board - Don Dudley and the SJA & CJB below him are where you go if you have a disciplinary issue with the university, and in some situations student government cases go there. I have had the opportunity to see the results of a small number of cases that went through there, and have always been impressed with how reasonable and just they are. You don’t get a bad rap in SJA - they seem to err on the side of going easy on students, and on as little intervention in the student gov’t as possible.
(i) Mark Champagne - (ASUCD Business Manager) I don’t know where ASUCD would be without Mark. He has always shown the utmost good judgment and discretion, walking a narrow line between preventing student leaders from being idiots (for example he prevented President Tiqula “Call me Half-Amazing” Bledsoe from expending student money on a limo to the President’s Ball he put on (which lost money, terribly)) while never unnecessarily entangling himself in student politics (as opposed to his associates in the Office of the Advisor).
Actually Exemplary:
(5) Go Funai - Funai, a LEAD senator back in the days of 6-6 deadlock and radically entrenched political parties struck me as always thinking critically about issues, always being willing to listen to the other side, and to make an informed and intelligent decision. When I think of a good Senator, I have always thought of Go. (To our knowledge, Go does not endorse the political party which now bears his name)
(4) & (3) Justices Kevin Powers and John Wheat - Shortly before they were set to be confirmed by the Senate I was alarmed to discover the interviewing committee which had nominated them had been improperly assembled, lacking critical participants. I resolved to at least make the most of it and put their ethics to the test, so instead of telling them, I told Senator Sanders to ask them their interpretation of that during the confirmation hearing, and I informed them themselves of it just moments before they were up.
When both Powers and Wheat stood before the senate and confidently answered that their confirmations would in fact be unconstitutional, I could not have been more proud. …And then Senate confirmed them, which I thought was pretty silly, but I overcame my misgivings about the immutability of the law and rhadamanthine justice because it would have been really messy to undo the confirmation (but personally I would not have confirmed them!). (=
(2) Jon Leathers - Leathers is one of few people I’ve seen to maintain the values he held as a public opposition member once he had succeeded his adversaries and become the Elections Chair himself. When things went haywire under him in the Unqualified Candidates Scandal, rather than try to sweep it under the table like the previous Elections Committee would have done he tried to blow the whistle as soon as he could and was a willing participant in a court case against HIMSELF to reverse the mistakes. He also risked impeachment himself several times to stand up for what he believed in, for example refusing to certifiy the Unqualified Candidates Scandal election after the Senate had retroactively changed the qualifications for office.
(1) Matty Jojola - I don’t know what exactly Matty did, but I do know what he didn’t do. EVERY other Editor-in-Chief of the Aggie during my time had been involved in a major scandal, yet somehow Matty maintained a spotless record. In light of the apparent irresistibility of corruption in the position to everyone else, Matty must have an unassailable sense of ethics.
It should be noted, that I cannot account for the most EFFECTIVE people in ASUCD, since I am not in a position to judge how well people are running the busses or running GASC etc etc. The above is a list of those who have had the opportunity to show exemplary ethics (or at least, for the group above that, have more value than people give them credit for). And below, below is a list of the most lacking in ethics.
ASUCD’s Most Ethically Misguided
Mildly Annoying:
(iv) Paul Harms - Fortunately, ASUCD’s self declared primate, Paul Harms, has never been in a position to really do any damage. He was briefly Chair of Internal Affairs Commission (IAC) when the previous occupant of that position got shuffled elsewhere (I forget what happened). During that time he entertained discussions on Kai Savaree-Ruess’s aspirations to eliminate the ASUCD judicial branch, and when more Justices than commissioners showed up to the IAC meeting to discuss this, he put them off as long as possible until the very end of the meeting, after even a random icecream break. Super mature. Needless to say he was effectively fired from that position within a week (not rehired technically, a rare event tantamount to firing). He managed to barely cheat political death by getting hired by the new Advisor who didn’t know any better into the Administrative Office and then entrench and ingratiate himself there until people thought he knew what he was talking about and was made Comptroller.
See Also: Things That Can Be Blamed on Paul Harms
(iii) Kalen Gallagher - So ambitious it was creepy, but all he really cared about was his own ascension, so he never bothered to do anything shady to accomplish anything else. He did, however, go veto crazy towards the end of his presidency, which was pretty annoying to a lot of people.
(ii-i) Sara Henry & Paloma Perez - Now, I don’t see anything wrong with the persistent rumours that President Sara Henry had sex with numerous members of ASUCD in her office, nor is it really condemnable that she tried to impeach me once. However, trying to remove me on two consecutive weeks was just rude. Especially since I really couldn’t tell you what the first impeachment was about (I think it was an accumulation of little complaints she piled together), and the second one was because I had a livejournal! The real reason, I’m almost certain is that at the time Paloma Perez was a defendant in a case before my court, and it had been a very long time since the Court had functioned properly enough to deal with such a case, so they were blaming me for the fact that there was a case and entertaining the totally misguided hope that somehow putting enough pressure on me would end the case.
Ethically Dysfunctional:
(22) Thomas Lloyd - Firstly it should be noted that Lloyd ran for election on strengthening the Court, but upon being elected almost immediately realized that was no longer in his own interest and took the Parliamentarian position with Kai of The Senate Can Solve Everything Itself. For this classic example of how people’s perspectives change depending on what suits them, I would put him in the mildly annoying category. (Incidentally, I saw through this ruse and voted for him nearly last that time, despite his friend Justice Raff’s assurances he would help the Court. Hah!)
However, he was also the primary advocate of retroactively changing the qualifications for office in the Unqualified Candidates Scandal, a terribly ethically misguided solution. On top of this, he had a well recognized pattern of advocating solving things through the exploitation of unethical loopholes, to such a degree that for some time afterwards people throughout ASUCD would refer to any ethically questionable solution to something as Lloydian.
Furthermore, the way he watches his daviswiki page like a hawk and fights any changes that look bad on him is pretty creepy.
(21) Jon Sanders and anyone who changed parties mid-term - At times it seemed fashionable for Senators to disavow their parties mid-term and proclaim that they were “above party politics.” What none of them seem to understand, is that the platform you run for election on is a PROMISE. Its not just you talking out of your ass in order to get elected - or at least you’re supposed to pretend its not. When you officially abandon the platform you were elected on, you are throwing away the promise you made to those who voted for you. No they did not vote for you to use your personal judgment to do absolutely whatever you saw fit, they voted for you to stand for what you told them at the time you stood for. People who are guilty of this who come to mind are Sen Jon Sanders (who actually switched parties) and Sens Rob Roy & Kristen Birdsall (who in their own words “defected” from their party - but there was a petition going around to expel them from the party anyway), and I’m pretty sure there were others.
(20) James Ackerman - Stole $356.76 worth of books from the Bookstore, and what’s worse, refused the call for him to resign from Senate over it until student clamour for his resignation was overwhelming. “Ackerman resigned!” is to this day still a meme on the ucdavis lj community - a strong testament to how much the issue had the attention of normally apathetic students.
(19) Chris Goran - And the rest of the Senators would stood behind James Ackerman, insisting that he shouldn’t resign. Goran went so far as to state that he so totally was in support of Ackerman not resigning, he would resign himself if Ackerman did. Under overwhelming pressure Ackerman resigned - but Goran reneged on his promise, noting that he’d realized it would be unfair to the people who voted for him if he resigned. To “pull a Chris Goran” now means to make a political statement you have no intention of backing up (Yes, I rank Goran slightly WORSE than Ackerman, because Goran not only was fully in support of Ackerman not resigning, he made an additional promise to the electorate which he forfeited)
(18) Mary Vasquez - Vasquez was a petulant and racist senator who firmly believed it was NEVER in poor taste to make derisive comments about “whitey” (seriously) during Senate or elsewhere. She also publicly stated during Senate that “The Irish people have never suffered, and therefore cannot claim to know anything about underprivileged people!” She immediately left the room after that, leaving the Senate shocked. Nevertheless I could not resist making a brief public synopsis of Oliver Cromwell, the Plantation Systems, and anti-Irish racism in America. (What can I say, I attended the same school in Ireland as Jonathon Swift!)
Vasquez also sued the Aggie over the less-than-complementary portrayal of her in the end of the year Spoof Edition.
(17) Talia Kennedy - While assigned to report on the ASUCD Senate she allegedly mated with then-senator Darnell Holloway. Later she started sleeping with the Aggie Editor-in-Chief and racked up TWO simultaneous editor positions for herself (drawing full pay from both). Proof that you CAN start sleeping your way to success in college.
(16) Aimee Theron - While assigned to report on the ASUCD Senate by the Aggie, Aimee allegedly slept with Sens Adam Barr, & Cohen-Cutler. During this time the major controversy of the Budget Hearing Scandal occurred, but sources implicate Aimee as suppressing the story.
(15-11) Aggie Editor-in-Chiefs Vo, Whelan, Fuller, Stone & Hamilton - (Every known E-in-C other than Jojola, see Exemplary above) Guilty of, respectively: political opinion motivated terminations and subsequent losses of lawsuits (Vo); near mutiny of staff (Whelan, Fuller); forced resignation over allegations of abuse of power (Stone); and personally motivated firings, hoarding of salaried positions under self and staff member he was sleeping with (see Kennedy above)( Hamilton).
In the Case 29 Opinion, the ASUCD Supreme Court noted that the current set-up in effect has no one above, parallel, or below the E-in-C to check their power. As the United States Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals observes, “A college newspaper's freedom from censorship does not necessarily imply that its facilities are the editor's private domain” (Joyner v. Whiting, 477 F.2d 456, 462 (4th Cir. 1973))
(10) Andrew Peake - Aspired to fire Commission Chair Pete Markovich entirely based on political statements the latter made on his own time which, god-forbid, endorsed Republican policies. You would think Peake, a proud member of the ACLU, would be more sensitive to freedom of speech than that.
(9)
Kai Savaree-Ruess - “The Goodly Kai” first appeared on Academic Affairs Commission, ran unsuccessfully for Senate, and then rose up through Infernal Affairs Commission, eventually building a cult of personality around himself. Since a lot of ASUCD officials start out as commissioners in IAC, pretty soon he had prominent people thinking he knew what he was talking about. He garnered further influence by completely rewriting the bylaws and combining two overly-lengthy volumes of bylaws into one extremely overly-lengthy volume of bylaws in which it’ll be even HARDER to find what you’re looking for (genius!!), and then ascended to the position of Comptroller. Thereupon he became even more outspoken about his Parliamentarian views that ASUCD should be united behind one branch -- the Senate. He immediately began advocating the elimination of the judicial branch and such discussions were eagerly entertained by his then-protégé Paul Harms, Chair of IAC at the time.
Fortunately the (temporary) political death of Harms set these plans back a bit and before long Cromwell Savaree-Ruess’ own political fortunes turned and he had to rely on the Court himself to protect him from his enemies (such as Peake)!! (of course the Court holds no grudges and found for Savory Rusk on the merits of his case)
(8-6) Salem, Farhadmotamed, & Higgens - “The Unqualified Candidates” - What only myself and the Elections Chair knew at the time, but were sworn to confidentiality regarding, is that the three unqualified candidates were on disciplinary probation for “plagiarism,” “narcotics / alcohol violations,” and “allegations of date rape.” I do not know if anyone other than them on the Senate knew for certain the nature of the charges, but if they knew of it and still stood as firmly behind the candidates as they did, I find this deeply concerning. The date-rape allegation was apparently dropped at some point. As to the other two, they explained them away as “I forgot to cite a quotation” and “drinking in the dorms” respectively. However, I know SJA to be extremely reasonable (see Exemplary Nonstudents ii), and know they would not put people on disciplinary probation for such things. Additionally, I had been on the judicial board of the dorms, and we dealt primarily with drinking in the dorms, and it NEVER resulted in university disciplinary probation - Farhadmotamed’s violation MUST have been something far worse than merely drinking in the dorms.
(5) Roy Roy - So who is most to blame for the Retroactive Solution? (a) The person who first came up with the idea (Lloyd); (b) the people who directly benefited from it (the candidates, above); (c) the other senators who weren’t personally at stake but supported it to get their friends into Senate; or the people who championed the solution and tried to sell it to the public (Roy, Birdsall)? As this is a list of the worst abuses of the public trust and attempts to get away with things, I would say it falls most heavily on the latter, those who championed the corruption.
On top of this, there’s a thick layer of hypocrisy since Roy and Birdsall initially ran on a strong anti-shadiness platform. How they did a 180 I think is actually very well explained by the theory of cognitive dissonance - wherein one rationalizes things in order to think oneself consistent. Roy and Birdsall, being friendly people, couldn’t bare to be at constant odds with their compatriots, however, they also couldn’t justify tolerating shady antics, therefore they rationalized that the antics were not in fact shady, made them their own and fought harder than anyone to prove that they were not shady.
Furthermore, it should be noted that in his statements of “who here likes democracy?,” Mob Roy fundamentally misunderstood some key points on democracy which should be noted. “Democracy” does not mean mob rule, democracy means elections guided by preset constitutional and legal principals (that are not retroactively changed to suit whoever happened to win!), and furthermore, it assumed the voters are as informed as possible. Because Higgens got elected without people knowing he was accused of date rape does NOT mean that he would have been elected if the people had known he was accused of such. Because the electorate surely does not want that, and to make things less messy, we had made it so people with such disciplinary problems could not run. Your “pro-democracy” fix means future senators may have untold skeletons in their closets.
Also, Robespierre Roy guillotined most of the officers of the Friends Urging Campus Kindness facebook group in order to solidify control under him and prepare to hijack the group for his city council campaign, and tried to hijack a Ben & Jerry's promotion as well.
In my opinion, Roy is actually a nice and very interesting guy, HOWEVER I think he fundamentally lacks the ethics required for public office.
(4) Kristen Birdsall - Birdsall not only committed (a) support of the Retroactive Solution, and (b) championing and justifying to the public of the solution as Roy had done, (c) she went a step further and called for the removal of the four prominent members of ASUCD who had expressed dissent over the Senate’s final solution.
As noted under “Exemplary (2)” above, Elections Chairman Leathers (and Van Schoelandt) were accused of heroically standing by their principals. Justice Harney was being persecuted for his role as a private plaintiff in a case he had initiated before he was on the court. And as to myself, the only accusation articulated against me was that I violated the Brown Act when parties to a case entered a Court meeting that wasn’t in session, DESPITE he fact that I had very recently invited the general public in the hallway to come in, DESPITE the fact that the Senate was at that very moment meeting in violation of the Brown Act itself (which is why everyone was bored in the hallway), DESPITE the fact that the Brown Act was never intended to apply to judicial bodies (parties to cases meet with judges “in chambers” away from the public all the time), and DESPITE the fact that if we had excluded those people from entering the meeting it would have been more shady than allowing them entrance - basically, a preposterous accusation that only has weight if you have absolutely no idea what the Brown Act consists of (incidentally, I’ve read the whole thing). AND Birdsall attempted to keep the accused as much in the dark as possible about what they were accused of as long as possible -- but ultimately overestimated and therefore I was able to have the Impeachment Hearing immediately terminated due to improper notification. Birdsall & Roy’s party subsequently dissolved.
(X) Unknown - I don’t even know who to blame for this, but the fact that the minutes from that Senate meeting in which they wrote the Retroactive Solution, which should have been made public once the Court found that meeting to be in violation of the Brown Act, could never be found is extremely shady. (The Recorder, allegedly the only person with a copy of them, “disappeared.”) I’m pretty sure if they were to be found we’d discover Lloyd to be guilty of perjury in his silly statements which basically said they didn’t discuss anything at the meeting. But it should be noted that most people mentioned already as involved in the Unqualified Candidates Scandal are also to some degree culpable of conspiring to write legislation behind closed doors in violation of the Brown Act (this is not worse than what Birdsall & Roy above did, but it flows better down here after the rest of the issue has been introduced)
(3) Chief Justice Turner - No one can contribute quite so effectively to injustice than the person whose job it is to enforce justice -- the Chief Justice. When myself and several other Focus-appointees were put on the Court prior to the big D1 Case, Chief Turner and her Lead-appointee existing Court members declared that we were all “too new” to sit on the case -- despite the fact that I cited at least nine places in the bylaws that said she could not do that. Her response was “I am the highest authority on the Constitution, and I interpret it to allow me to do this.” This followed a general pattern of justifying Court decisions with “because I said so.”
Turner and her Court found the vote to move to the D1 division of athletics “null and void,” I wrote a dissenting opinion, but Turner declared it invalid. Eventually we met with the University Legal Council, who basically informed us that I was correct.
I’m almost certain that the reason Turner didn’t want us Focus-appointees on the case was because she assumed we’d all be in favour of the Focus-endorsed move to D1 (Which her and the rest of the Lead-appointed current Court opposed). This is kind of ironic because before I was on the Court I had actually campaigned against D1 and was adamantly against it. Nevertheless I found the D1 Referendum NOT null or void (because of the precedent that a small technical error does not invalidate a vote which has already taken place, and elections disqualifications had already been specifically reserved for the Elections Committee rather than the Court (see Beaman below).)
Anyway, a month later Turner resigned the morning she was scheduled for impeachment and I became Chief Justice while the newest member of the Court. Ever since I have kept in mind the potential abuse a Chief Justice or court can cause and I’m sure Justices who’ve served with me will tell you that I’ve always been the one arguing for the most limited view of our authority and the most constraints on the Court and Chief Justice.
(2) Dan Beaman - Beaman, Bledsoe’s Vice President, made it his declared goal to eliminate the judicial branch of ASUCD. The Court, you see, had disqualified Beaman and Bledsoe in their election do to massive cheating (one of their campaign managers who had no qualms with later stealing $10,000 from Unitrans, STILL thought their level of cheating was outrageous and disassociated himself). After Bledsoe and Beaman threatened to sue, the Court rolled over and let them take office. They subsequently removed elections from the jurisdiction of the Court, removed the title “Supreme” and various other things. The original plan had been to eliminate the Court altogether the following year, but by then the political capital to do so no longer existed.
(1) “The Reverend Tequila” Bledsoe - During Bledsoe/Beaman’s election, flyers started appearing around campus allegedly authored by the “KKK of Davis” urging people not to vote for them. Who exactly is the KKK of Davis? Well the only witness, a janitor, reported he saw “a tall black man and a short white guy” putting up those flyers ... a description that exactly fits Bledsoe/Beaman themselves!! (and is pretty unlikely to describe any real KKK, if one were to assume one exists and has only ever felt strongly enough about something as to show themselves when Bledsoe ran for Pres) In addition to this, and the corruption mentioned above, Tequila “My Friends Call Me Half-Amazing” Bledsoe, also attempted to spend student money on things like his own parking tickets and a limo to his own Presidential Ball (which was justified as a fund-raiser but ran a huge deficit, leaving his successor way under-budget). Fortunately Mark Champagne stopped many of these ridiculous expenditures. Bledsoe, who considered himself an actual reverend, had no qualms with using petty profanities to describe his political opponents even while Aggie reporters stood by, and described himself as “the Black Caesar” and “the Mohammed-Ali of ASUCD.”
In so many ways, Tiqula Bledsoe was the very incarnation of a bad politician: self-righteous and hugely egotistical, petty and obnoxious to his opponents, completely lacking in qualms with cheating, corruption, and extravagant misuse of funds.
(BONUS) Vicky Swett - But of course this list could never be complete without Vicki Swett. For over 30 years she promoted favouritism, gossip, and drama in ASUCD. While in a position of trust and neutrality, her favouritism for certain candidates and parties was barely disguised, if not flaunted outright. The years prior to her retirement were filled with significantly more drama and viscous clashes of personalities, and I have no doubt that it was in no small part because she set the tone. There certainly has been shadiness since, but the atmosphere of the deadly snake-put of drama is long gone. Because she abused the objectivity and neutrality her position was supposed to provide, she is guilty of a great miscarriage of ethics. Because for thirty years she promoted a hostile and counterproductive atmosphere in ASUCD, the self-declared “Queen Victoria” has probably done immeasurable damage to the association.
And now… I probably have significantly more enemies. It should be noted that I think many of the people mentioned above are very nice people in general. In particular I feel a bit torn about the “Unqualified Candidates” themselves because they all turned out to be pretty nice people and kept themselves out of any further shadiness that I know of, but it would be hard to justify not including them on the list.
Anyway, my hope in posting this is that people who are just becoming involved in ASUCD will read it and keep in mind what NOT to do in the future.